Ottawa

Ottawa, Algonquian-speaking North American Indians whose original territory focused on the Ottawa River, the French River, and Georgian Bay, in present northern Michigan, U.S., and southeastern Ontario and southwestern Quebec, Canada. According to tradition, the Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi were formerly one tribe, having migrated from the northwest and separated at what is now Mackinaw, Michigan. The earliest known location of the Ottawa was on Manitoulin Island.

Pontiac, a noted Ottawa chief, with his war hatchet.The Granger Collection, New York

The Ottawa were widely known as traders; their location and negotiating skills enabled them to become middlemen in intertribal commerce. Their canoes traveled as far west as Green Bay, Wisconsin, and as far east as Quebec to buy and sell such merchandise as cornmeal, furs, sunflower oil, mats, tobacco, and medicinal herbs. Before colonization by the French and English, the Ottawa were semisedentary, living in agricultural villages in summer and separating into family groups for winter hunts. Planting and harvesting crops were women’s occupations; hunting and fishing were the responsibility of men. Ottawa villages were sometimes palisaded for protection.

In the late 17th century the tribe comprised four, or possibly five, major divisions, which were subdivided into local bands; they are believed to have had several clans distributed among the bands. Attacked by the Iroquois, the Ottawa fled, some joining the Potawatomi at Green Bay, others dispersing throughout the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, Wisconsin, and northern Illinois.

Early 21st-century population estimates indicated some 14,000 individuals of Ottawa descent.